Octopuses have souls too
I knew little about octopuses – not even that the scientifically correct plural is not octopi, as I had always believed (it turns out you can’t put a Latin ending (i) on a word derived from Greek, such as octopus). But what I did know intrigued me. Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot and ink like an old-fashioned pen.
It can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change colour and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart. This bore out what scant experience I had already had; like many who visit octopuses in public aquariums, I’ve often had the feeling that the octopus I was watching was watching me back, with an interest as keen as my own.
How could that be? It’s hard to find an animal more unlike a human than an octopus. Their mouths are in their armpits. They breathe water. Their appendages are covered with dexterous, grasping suckers, a structure for which no mammal has an equivalent. And not only are octopuses on the opposite side of the great vertebral divide that separates the backboned creatures such as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish from everything else, they are classed within the invertebrates as molluscs, as are slugs and snails and clams, animals that are not particularly renowned for their intellect. Clams don’t even have brains.
More than half a billion years ago, the lineage that would lead to octopuses and the one leading to humans separated. Was it possible, I wondered, to reach another mind on the other side of that divide? So when the director of the New England Aquarium offered to introduce me to Athena, their Pacific octopus, I felt like a privileged visitor to another world.
A giant Pacific octopus – the largest of the world’s 250 or so octopus species – can easily overpower a person. Just one of a big male’s threeinch- diameter suckers can lift 30lb, and a giant Pacific octopus has 1,600 of them. An octopus bite can inject a neurotoxic venom as well as saliva that has the ability to dissolve flesh.
When I meet her, Athena is about two-and-a-half-years old and weighs roughly 40lb. At this age she stretches about 5ft long. Her head – by ‘head’ I mean both the actual head and the mantle, or body, because that’s where we mammals expect an animal’s head to be – is the size of a small watermelon.
‘When she first came, it was the size of a grapefruit,’ says Scott, the aquarist in charge of introducing us. The giant Pacific octopus is one of the fastest-growing animals on the planet. Hatching from an egg the size of a grain of rice, it can grow longer and heavier than a man in under three years.
It’s agreed that I can touch Athena so I roll up my sleeves and plunge both arms elbowdeep into the shockingly cold 47F water. Twisting, gelatinous, her arms rise up from the water, reaching for mine. Instantly both my hands and forearms are engulfed by dozens of soft, questing suckers.
Not everyone would like this. But Athena’s suction is gentle, though insistent. Her head bobs to the surface, and her left eye – octopuses have a dominant eye, as people have dominant hands – swivels in its socket to meet mine. Her black pupil is a fat hyphen in a pearly globe.
Her head is silky and softer than custard. Her skin is flecked with ruby and silver, a night sky reflected on the wine-dark sea. As I stroke her with my fingertips, her skin goes white beneath my touch. White is the colour of a relaxed octopus; in cuttlefish, close relatives of octopus, females turn white when they encounter a fellow female, someone whom they need not fight or flee.
It is possible that Athena knows I am female. Female octopuses, like female humans, possess oestrogen; she could be sensing mine. Octopuses can taste with their entire bodies, but this sense is most exquisitely developed in their suckers. Athena’s is an exceptionally intimate embrace. She is at once touching and tasting my skin, and possibly the muscle, bone and blood beneath. And she seems as curious about me as I am about her.
Slowly, she transfers her grip on me from the smaller, outer suckers at the tips of her arms to the larger, stronger ones nearer her head. She is pulling me steadily into her tank. I ask Scott if I should try to detach from her grip and he gently pulls us apart, her suckers making popping sounds like small plungers as my skin is released. I would have gladly followed but could not have survived in her world.
The giant Pacific isn’t as big as it used to be. An octopus with an arm span of more than 150 feet may have once existed. But the largest octopus now listed by Guinness World Records weighed 300lb and had an arm span stretching a mere 32ft. Minuscule compared to their molluscan relative, the colossal squid – a recent specimen captured by a New Zealand boat fishing off Antarctica weighed more than 1,000lb.
After our embrace, Athena floated back to her lair and I staggered back down the steps and stood dizzy for a moment and caught my breath. The only word I could manage was ‘Wow’. Athena’s behaviour was surprising given her personality apparently. She was a particularly feisty octopus: very active, and prone to excitement, which she showed by turning her skin bumpy and red. Octopuses are highly individual and realise that humans are individuals too. They like some people; they dislike others.
At the Seattle Aquarium, for instance, when one biologist would check on a normally friendly octopus, she would be greeted by a blast of painfully cold salt water shot from the funnel. The octopus hosed her and only her. Wild octopuses use their funnels not only for propulsion but also to repel things they don’t like. The idea of octopuses with thoughts, feelings and personalities disturbs some scientists and philosophers. Only relatively recently have researchers accorded even chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of a mind.
Each of Athena’s arms seemed like a separate creature, with a mind of its own. In fact, this is almost literally true. Three fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain but in the arms. If an arm is severed from an octopus’s body, the arm will often carry on as if nothing has happened for several hours.
Just one of Athena’s suckers was enough to seize my complete concentration – and she has 1,600 of them. Each was busily multitasking: sucking, tasting, grabbing, holding, plucking, releasing. Each arm on a giant Pacific octopus has two rows of suckers, the smallest at the tips, the largest about a third of the way to the mouth. Each sucker can even fold to create a pincer grip, like your thumb and forefinger can. Each is operated by individual nerves that the octopus controls voluntarily and independently.
While Athena was tasting my arms and hands, she had made a point of looking into my face. I was impressed that she even recognised a face so unlike her own, and wondered whether Athena might like to taste my face as well as look at it. But that is never allowed, Scott says, as it would be too dangerous.
A few weeks later, I visit her again, this time when she is about to be fed. Athena rises up from her lair like steam from a pot. She’s coming to greet Wilson, another of the aquarists. She moves so quickly it takes my breath away. ‘She knows me,’ Wilson states simply.
He reaches into the cold water to greet her. Athena’s white suckers arch from the water to grasp Wilson’s hands and forearms. She looks at him with her silvery eye, then surprises me: she flips over, like a puppy showing its belly. Wilson hands a fish to the centre suckers on one of her front arms. The food heads towards her mouth like on a conveyor belt as she passes it from sucker to sucker.
He hands her one fish after another, three more in all. He deposits each in the suckers of a different arm. I watch in astonishment as Athena conveys each fish along her suckers, towards her mouth. It seems to take a long time before each fish reaches its destination. Why doesn’t she just flex the arm and place the fish directly in her mouth? Then it occurs to me: taste is pleasurable, and it’s pleasurable because it’s useful. This is how we know what is good and safe to eat and what is inedible. An octopus does the same with its suckers.
Once she finishes eating her fish, she plays gently with Wilson’s hands and forearms. Occasionally the tendril-like tip of an arm curls up to his elbow, but almost lazily; mostly her arms twist weightlessly in the water, her suckers gently kissing his skin. With me, her suction had felt exploratory, insistent. But with Wilson she is completely relaxed. As I look at the man and the octopus touching each other, they remind me of a happy older couple, many years into a loving marriage, tenderly holding hands.
‘She has eyelids like a person does,’ says Wilson, and gently passes his hand over her eyes, causing her to slowly wink. She doesn’t recoil or move away. The fish are gone; she is staying just for the company. ‘She’s a very gentle octopus,’ he says, ‘very gentle…’
Edited extract from The Soul Of An Octopus, by Sy Montgomery, published by Simon & Schuster, priced £12.99.
It can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change colour and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart. This bore out what scant experience I had already had; like many who visit octopuses in public aquariums, I’ve often had the feeling that the octopus I was watching was watching me back, with an interest as keen as my own.
How could that be? It’s hard to find an animal more unlike a human than an octopus. Their mouths are in their armpits. They breathe water. Their appendages are covered with dexterous, grasping suckers, a structure for which no mammal has an equivalent. And not only are octopuses on the opposite side of the great vertebral divide that separates the backboned creatures such as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish from everything else, they are classed within the invertebrates as molluscs, as are slugs and snails and clams, animals that are not particularly renowned for their intellect. Clams don’t even have brains.
More than half a billion years ago, the lineage that would lead to octopuses and the one leading to humans separated. Was it possible, I wondered, to reach another mind on the other side of that divide? So when the director of the New England Aquarium offered to introduce me to Athena, their Pacific octopus, I felt like a privileged visitor to another world.
A giant Pacific octopus – the largest of the world’s 250 or so octopus species – can easily overpower a person. Just one of a big male’s threeinch- diameter suckers can lift 30lb, and a giant Pacific octopus has 1,600 of them. An octopus bite can inject a neurotoxic venom as well as saliva that has the ability to dissolve flesh.
When I meet her, Athena is about two-and-a-half-years old and weighs roughly 40lb. At this age she stretches about 5ft long. Her head – by ‘head’ I mean both the actual head and the mantle, or body, because that’s where we mammals expect an animal’s head to be – is the size of a small watermelon.
‘When she first came, it was the size of a grapefruit,’ says Scott, the aquarist in charge of introducing us. The giant Pacific octopus is one of the fastest-growing animals on the planet. Hatching from an egg the size of a grain of rice, it can grow longer and heavier than a man in under three years.
It’s agreed that I can touch Athena so I roll up my sleeves and plunge both arms elbowdeep into the shockingly cold 47F water. Twisting, gelatinous, her arms rise up from the water, reaching for mine. Instantly both my hands and forearms are engulfed by dozens of soft, questing suckers.
Not everyone would like this. But Athena’s suction is gentle, though insistent. Her head bobs to the surface, and her left eye – octopuses have a dominant eye, as people have dominant hands – swivels in its socket to meet mine. Her black pupil is a fat hyphen in a pearly globe.
Her head is silky and softer than custard. Her skin is flecked with ruby and silver, a night sky reflected on the wine-dark sea. As I stroke her with my fingertips, her skin goes white beneath my touch. White is the colour of a relaxed octopus; in cuttlefish, close relatives of octopus, females turn white when they encounter a fellow female, someone whom they need not fight or flee.
It is possible that Athena knows I am female. Female octopuses, like female humans, possess oestrogen; she could be sensing mine. Octopuses can taste with their entire bodies, but this sense is most exquisitely developed in their suckers. Athena’s is an exceptionally intimate embrace. She is at once touching and tasting my skin, and possibly the muscle, bone and blood beneath. And she seems as curious about me as I am about her.
Slowly, she transfers her grip on me from the smaller, outer suckers at the tips of her arms to the larger, stronger ones nearer her head. She is pulling me steadily into her tank. I ask Scott if I should try to detach from her grip and he gently pulls us apart, her suckers making popping sounds like small plungers as my skin is released. I would have gladly followed but could not have survived in her world.
The giant Pacific isn’t as big as it used to be. An octopus with an arm span of more than 150 feet may have once existed. But the largest octopus now listed by Guinness World Records weighed 300lb and had an arm span stretching a mere 32ft. Minuscule compared to their molluscan relative, the colossal squid – a recent specimen captured by a New Zealand boat fishing off Antarctica weighed more than 1,000lb.
After our embrace, Athena floated back to her lair and I staggered back down the steps and stood dizzy for a moment and caught my breath. The only word I could manage was ‘Wow’. Athena’s behaviour was surprising given her personality apparently. She was a particularly feisty octopus: very active, and prone to excitement, which she showed by turning her skin bumpy and red. Octopuses are highly individual and realise that humans are individuals too. They like some people; they dislike others.
At the Seattle Aquarium, for instance, when one biologist would check on a normally friendly octopus, she would be greeted by a blast of painfully cold salt water shot from the funnel. The octopus hosed her and only her. Wild octopuses use their funnels not only for propulsion but also to repel things they don’t like. The idea of octopuses with thoughts, feelings and personalities disturbs some scientists and philosophers. Only relatively recently have researchers accorded even chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of a mind.
Each of Athena’s arms seemed like a separate creature, with a mind of its own. In fact, this is almost literally true. Three fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain but in the arms. If an arm is severed from an octopus’s body, the arm will often carry on as if nothing has happened for several hours.
Just one of Athena’s suckers was enough to seize my complete concentration – and she has 1,600 of them. Each was busily multitasking: sucking, tasting, grabbing, holding, plucking, releasing. Each arm on a giant Pacific octopus has two rows of suckers, the smallest at the tips, the largest about a third of the way to the mouth. Each sucker can even fold to create a pincer grip, like your thumb and forefinger can. Each is operated by individual nerves that the octopus controls voluntarily and independently.
While Athena was tasting my arms and hands, she had made a point of looking into my face. I was impressed that she even recognised a face so unlike her own, and wondered whether Athena might like to taste my face as well as look at it. But that is never allowed, Scott says, as it would be too dangerous.
A few weeks later, I visit her again, this time when she is about to be fed. Athena rises up from her lair like steam from a pot. She’s coming to greet Wilson, another of the aquarists. She moves so quickly it takes my breath away. ‘She knows me,’ Wilson states simply.
He reaches into the cold water to greet her. Athena’s white suckers arch from the water to grasp Wilson’s hands and forearms. She looks at him with her silvery eye, then surprises me: she flips over, like a puppy showing its belly. Wilson hands a fish to the centre suckers on one of her front arms. The food heads towards her mouth like on a conveyor belt as she passes it from sucker to sucker.
He hands her one fish after another, three more in all. He deposits each in the suckers of a different arm. I watch in astonishment as Athena conveys each fish along her suckers, towards her mouth. It seems to take a long time before each fish reaches its destination. Why doesn’t she just flex the arm and place the fish directly in her mouth? Then it occurs to me: taste is pleasurable, and it’s pleasurable because it’s useful. This is how we know what is good and safe to eat and what is inedible. An octopus does the same with its suckers.
Once she finishes eating her fish, she plays gently with Wilson’s hands and forearms. Occasionally the tendril-like tip of an arm curls up to his elbow, but almost lazily; mostly her arms twist weightlessly in the water, her suckers gently kissing his skin. With me, her suction had felt exploratory, insistent. But with Wilson she is completely relaxed. As I look at the man and the octopus touching each other, they remind me of a happy older couple, many years into a loving marriage, tenderly holding hands.
‘She has eyelids like a person does,’ says Wilson, and gently passes his hand over her eyes, causing her to slowly wink. She doesn’t recoil or move away. The fish are gone; she is staying just for the company. ‘She’s a very gentle octopus,’ he says, ‘very gentle…’
Edited extract from The Soul Of An Octopus, by Sy Montgomery, published by Simon & Schuster, priced £12.99.